MELBOURNE: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Thursday met former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in Perth and discussed issues related to the climate change.
The meeting between the two leaders came after a joint opinion piece by them was published in a local publication here urging global action on climate change.
The meeting was held in Perth based five star hotel followed by Arnie's appearance at a business leadership forum, according to Australian Associated Press (AAP) news agency.
Gillard said she would have liked to have talked about his movies as she was a fan, but instead they discussed a shared concern - climate change.
"He of course led California to putting a price on carbon, to reduce carbon pollution," she was quoted as saying by the news agency.
"He is from the conservative side of politics, a Republican. If he was here in Australia, he would be on the Liberal-National side of politics, but he saw his way to putting a price on carbon as the best way of tackling climate change.
"So we talked about his experience in California and how we've put a price on carbon here," she said.
The opinion piece, published in News Limited newspapers, stressed that the two regions were not alone in acting on climate change, and that by the end of the year over a billion people will be living in a state or country where a price on carbon is in place.
"California and Australia have a lot in common - climate change threatens our fragile environments and aggravates serious bushfires, droughts and floods, which put our important agricultural industries at risk," they wrote.
"Because of these similar challenges, even though we are leaders from different sides of the political spectrum, we strongly agree on two fundamental ideas - that taking action on climate change can no longer be delayed and that such actions can succeed beyond partisan politics.
"By the end of 2013, more than a billion people will be living in a state or country where a price on carbon pollution is in place, demonstrating that we are not alone.
"What the Industrial Revolution and the Information Technology Revolution have shown is that the people in regions which lead these transformations prosper the most and the soonest. It is the same with the Clean Energy Revolution."
